Browsing by Title
Now showing items 21741-21760 of 32623
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(2019)This thesis examines the principle of non-refoulement under two different frameworks of international law, refugee law and human rights law, with the purpose of finding out how the content and interpretation of this principle are different between them. While the main purpose and idea of the principle is the same, to protect individuals from being sent to persecution or torture or other ill-treatment, there are nevertheless some differences. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to determine how and to what extent non-refoulement is interpreted differently in these regimes. Furthermore, an analysis on the reasons behind these differences as well as a discussion on the significance it has to the individual are also included. The main difference between the two frameworks concerns exceptions. Under human rights law, non-refoulement is an absolute principle and no derogation from it is allowed under any circumstances. On the contrary, two exceptions are permitted in the refugee law framework allowing states to expel, extradite or remove in other ways an individual even if a risk to their life or freedom exists in the receiving state if that person is a risk to the national security or the person has been convicted of a serious crime and is considered a danger to the community. These different interpretations on non-refoulement create situations where an individual may be treated differently depending on which framework is applied. Some scholars have also questioned the absoluteness of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights under which non-refoulement is protected. States have heavily protested against the European Court of Human Rights interpretation of Article 3 claiming that since exceptions are allowed under refugee law, they should be able to apply them. One of the issues is that refugee law is mainly applied at the national level which means that states are interpreting and applying international law in accordance with their interests. Often, the interest of states is different from that of the refugee which leads to the situation that the individual refugee loses as states are able to apply the exceptions. Furthermore, the lack of an international court or treaty body able to give binding decisions on the interpretation of the 1951 Convention has also contributed to the fact that the state perspective wins. When it comes to the underlying reasons behind these different interpretations, it appears that the human rights law interpretation on non-refoulement has been developed with the objective of guaranteeing protection for all individuals. Refugee law is of course focused on securing the rights of refugees but when examining the preparatory works of the 1951 Refugee Convention, it was clear that there was also a strong will to include a safety net for states in the form of exceptions. Thus, the diverging interests of individuals and states have contributed to the tension now visible between refugee law and human rights law. There appears to be a conflict between state sovereignty and the refugee’s rights and interests. It is therefore questioned whether the 1951 Convention provisions on non-refoulement actually offer protection for the individual or the state.
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(2015)Tässä pro gradu -tutkielmassa perehdytään luomun markkinointiin mainoskuvan analyysin keinoin. Tutkielmassa tutkitaan kvalitatiivista mainosanalyysiä apuna käyttäen, mitä mainoskuvat viestivät luomusta ja millä keinoin. Luomumainokset ovat elintarvikemainonnan osa ja luomu yhä nousevan ekologisen tietoisuuden aikana ajankohtainen tutkielman aihe. Tutkielmassa syvennytään mainoskuvan katselukokemukseen siten, että tutkija tekee analyysin kuudesta (6) luomumainoksesta, jotka ovat Finfood – Suomen Ruokatieto Ry:n (nykyinen Ruokatieto Ry) toimeksi antamia tai sellaisia, joissa näkyy luomumerkki. Mainokset on kerätty vuosilta 1998–2004, joten niistä saadaan näkökulma siihen, miten luomumainostaminen on tapahtunut aiemmin ja miten mainonta on kehittynyt näiden vuosien aikana. Tutkielman tavoite on selvittää, mitä ja miten luomumainoksilla on viestitty luomusta. Erityistä huomiota kiinnitetään visuaaliseen rakenteeseen ja yhteneväisyyteen ja pohditaan, millaisia mielikuvia mainokset herättävät. Elintarvikemainosten tehokkuutta tutkitaan usein kvantitatiivisesti, esimerkiksi myynnin kehitystä seuraamalla. Mainoskuvassa on kuitenkin myös kvalitatiiviselle tutkimukselle hyvää aineistoa löydettävissä, sillä mainoskuvat ovat sisällöltään rikkaita. Tavoite saavutetaan tutkimalla, mitkä elementit aiheuttavat mainoskuvassa tämän sanattoman kommunikaation ja miten päällisin puolin yksinkertaiselta tuntuvan kuvan kielioppi kertoo mainostettavasta aiheesta. Tutkielmasta saadaan tätä ajatusta kuljettamalla sivutuotteena tulokseksi, mitä luomusta on mainoskuvilla viestitty. Tulevaisuudessa on tärkeää, että mainostaja ymmärtää tuottamansa visuaalisen materiaalin vaikutukset ja syyt syvällisesti. Suomessa on monia erilaisia mainosalan ja media-alan toimijoita, jotka tuottavat tutkimusdataa ja mainonnan mittaristoja. Suurasiakkaat, kuten Ruokakesko Oy, tilaavat mittaristoja, sekä ylläpitävät omia mainonnan mittaristojaan. Samat tahot myös tilaavat mainokset. On tilaa tutkielmalle, jossa perehdytään elintarvikemainontaan tuorein silmin, syvästi sisällölliseltä näkökannalta. Mainoskuvan analyysillä visuaalisen kieliopin avulla voidaan avata uusia näkökulmia mainoksiin. Tutkielmassa halutaan myös tuottaa lisää materiaalia mainoskuvan tutkimuksen saralla. Tutkielman pääkysymys oli; mitä ja miten luomumainoksilla on viestitty luomusta, johon löytyi monia vastauksia mainoksista. Luomusta on viestitty, että luomun ostaminen on erilainen tapa ajatella kotitalouden ruokaostoksia. Luomukuluttajalle on viestitty vahvasta ja uskaliaasta valinnasta, jolla on vaikutusta. Mainoskuvat luokittelevat luomun luonnonläheisyyteen, lisäaineettomuuteen ja turvallisuuteen kulutusvalinnoissa. Monessa tutkielman mainoksessa luomun vihreä värimaailma ja sloganit, www-sivut sekä tiedottavuus ovat mainoksen pääelementtejä. Mainokset kertovat luomun olevan ennen muuta turvallinen valinta, joka perustuu tulevaisuuteen.
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(2024)Recently, 3D reconstruction has become a popular topic due to applications in Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and historical heritage preservation. Yet, high-quality reconstruction is not available to the general public because of the cost of laser scanners. The goal of this thesis is to make the democratization of 3D reconstruction closer with the use of photogrammetry (reconstruction from multi-view images.) However, current approaches are very slow and tend to oversmooth the geometry. Our method involves learning the scene via a neural representation by taking posed multi-view images as input. We note that state-of-the-art (SOTA) approaches rely on traditional Structure-from-Motion (SfM) algorithms to extract camera poses. We also observe that SfM can generate a coarsely correct mesh for the underlying object. Nevertheless, SOTA techniques start training the neural representation from a sphere. Therefore, we propose a novel initialization method that takes the mesh obtained from SfM and initializes the neural representation from it. We validate our approach through extensive experiments on a widely used multi-view stereo DTU dataset. We show that our method outperforms both traditional and SOTA neural techniques in terms of reconstruction quality. It manages to learn the underlying geometry and recover small details like cracks and dents. We also show that it speeds up convergence by 4 times. All the datasets, reconstructed meshes, and learned model weights are available at this link.
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(2009)Tutkielmassa tarkastellaan puheessa syntyneitä sekarakenteita, kontaminaatioita. Pääosin kahdesta eri sanasta sekoittuneista kontaminaatioista on kartoitettu niiden muotorakenteen lisäksi ilmaukseen osallistuneiden sanojen keskinäisiä merkityssuhteita. Tämän lisäksi näiden epäkonventionaalisina pidettyjen sanojen ja ilmausten esiintymistä on verrattu Internetin kieleen. Kontaminaatioaineisto on vuosien aikana kerätty puhutun kielen vuorovaikutustilanteista keskusteluista sekä tv-ohjelmista. Sanasekoittumien selitykset ja kontaminaatioon osallistuneet sanat ovat selvinneet puhekontekstista ja puhujien oman kielensä analysoinnin tuloksena. Tutkielma keskittyy nykykieleen, ja kontaminaatiota tarkastellaan kognitiivisen kielinäkemyksen sekä psykolingvistiikan tutkimusten valossa. Historiallinen näkökulma otetaan kuitenkin huomioon, sillä kontaminaatio ilmiönä tunnetaan historiallisessa ja vertailevassa kielitieteessä yhtenä kielenmuutoksen aiheuttajana. Kontaminaatioilla on ollut rooli myös kielessä vaikuttavan analogian määrittelyssä. Vaikka kontaminaatiot eivät ole ennustettavia, niiden rakenteesta on löydettävissä tiettyjä yhdenmukaisuuksia. Sanakontaminaatio on esimerkiksi hyvin usein sananmuunnoksen toinen osa kontaminaatioon osallistuvista sanoista: kontaminaatio potki sanoista poikki ja katki näkyy sanoista tehtävässä sananmuunnoksessa kaikki ja potki. Toinen keskeinen havainto kontaminaatioista on, että niiden sanahahmo seuraa lähes aina vähintään toista kontaminaatioon osallistuvan sanan sanahahmoa, esimerkiksi muoto lumpukka sanoista ulpukka ja lumme seuraa morajäsennyksen mukaan sanan ulpukka sanahahmoa. Keskeistä kontaminaatioiden muodostumisessa on sanojen semantiikka. Tutkimuksessa osoitetaankin, että ilman sanojen välillä olevaa semanttista linkkiä kontaminaatiota ei voi muodostua. Kaikkein useimmiten suhde on lähimerkityksinen, mutta esimerkiksi samaan merkityskenttään kuuluvat sanat, kuten ihmisen ruumiinosat peukalo ja varpaat, voivat muodostaa puheessa sekamuodon varpalo. Sekoittumiseen voi vaikuttaa myös aiemmin puhuttu tai kuultu äänneaines. Tämä kontaminaation muodostumiseen liittyvä problematiikka otetaan tutkimuksessa huomioon. Toisaalta työssä keskitytään lähinnä puhujien tuotoksiin eikä syihin pureuduta tarkemmin. Tutkimuksessa myös verrataan aineiston kontaminaatioita Internetissä käytettävään kieleen. Tällöin on todettavissa, että joillakin kontaminaatiomuodoilla on frekvenssiä kirjoitetussakin kielessä. Esimerkiksi ilmaukset siipale (viipale + siivu), suhtalaisen (suhteellisen + kohtalaisen) sekä tarpeudesta (tarpeellisuudesta + esim. tärkeydestä) ovat Internetissä kirjoittavien käytössä. Aineistoon kontaminaatioina kirjatut esimerkit eivät kaikille olekaan epäkonventionaalisia sanoja. Kontaminaatioita tarkastelemalla voi havaita, miten kielen rakenteet joustavat ja miten ilmaukset joissakin tapauksissa muuttuvat konventionaalisiksi niin suomessa kuin muissakin kielissä. Suurin osa kontaminaatioista on kuitenkin hetkellisiä ilmauksia, jotka kertovat mielenkiintoisella tavalla merkitysten muotoutumisesta puhehetkellä.
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(2020)Pro gradu -tutkielmani aiheena on Helsingissä vuonna 1956 perustettu taiteilijaryhmä Prisma. Siihen kuuluivat taiteilijat Yngve Bäck (1904–1990), Gösta Diehl (1899–1964), Ragnar Ekelund (1892–1960), Torger Enckell (1901–1991), Unto Pusa (1913–1973), Sigrid Schauman (1877–1979) ja Sam Vanni (1908–1992). Tämä kansainvälisesti suuntautunut taiteilijaryhmä järjesti yhteisnäyttelyitä vuosina 1956–1970 sekä Suomessa että ulkomailla, ja sitä pidetään erityisesti ranskalaisen modernismin edustajana Suomessa. Ryhmä toimi aktiivisesti vuosina 1956–1961. Tutkielmassani arvioin sitä, mikä oli Prisma-ryhmän merkitys Suomen taidekentällä 1950-luvulla. Tutkielmani on aineistolähtöinen, laadullinen perustutkimus. Sen lähdeaineisto koostuu tutkimuskirjallisuudesta, 1950-luvun taidetta ja Prisma-ryhmän jäseniä käsittelevästä kirjallisuudesta, Prisman jäsenten omista taideteoreettisista kirjoituksista, sanomalehtikirjoituksista, näyttelyluetteloista, dokumenttifilmeistä, maalauksista sekä arkistoaineistosta, joka sisältää muistitietoaineistoa, taiteilijoiden kirjeenvaihtoa ja luonnos- ja muistikirjoja. Lähestyn aineistoa historiallisesti kontekstualisoivan analyysin keinoin. Prisman toiminnan tarkoituksena oli ennen kaikkea näyttelyiden järjestäminen mutta myös uusien taidevirtausten tunnetuksi tekeminen. Se saavutti läpimurron heti ensimmäisellä näyttelyllään, ja näyttelyt saivat myöhemminkin pääosin hyvän vastaanoton. Ryhmän jäsenet olivat jo ryhmän perustamisen aikaan etabloituneita ja arvostettuja taiteilijoita, ja he edustivat erilaisia modernistisia tyylisuuntia figuratiivisuudesta nonfiguratiivisuuteen. Taiteilijoiden teoksia yhdistivät puhtaat värit, selkeä muotorakenne sekä ranskalaisesta taiteesta saadut vaikutteet. Suurin osa heistä pyrki kohti abstraktia ilmaisua. Yhteistä kaikille Prisman jäsenille oli korkean taiteellisen laadun vaatimus sekä koloristisesti painottunut, maltillinen ja maalauksellinen tyyli. Prisma-ryhmä kytkeytyi osaksi kansainvälistä modernistista traditiota, ja sillä oli vahvat siteet erityisesti ranskalaiseen modernismiin. Monet prismalaisista olivat myös itse arvostettuja taidekriitikoita ja opettajia. He vaikuttivat toimintansa kautta abstraktien taidesuuntausten ja ranskalaisesta modernismista saamiensa vaikutteiden leviämiseen Suomessa. Prisma pyrki ottamaan etäisyyttä kansallisia vaikutteita painottaneista ryhmistä ja erosi niistä erityisesti kansainvälisten kontaktiensa ja uudistusmielisyytensä takia. Prismaa on usein pidetty vuonna 1912 perustetun, ranskalaisvaikutteista impressionistista värimaalausta edustaneen Septem-ryhmän perinteen jatkajana. Prisma toimi järjestelmällisesti ja ammattimaisesti poikkeuksellisen kansainvälisesti verrattuna aikakauden muihin suomalaisiin taiteilijaryhmiin. Prisma oli merkittävä toimija ja edelläkävijän asemassa suomalaisessa taidekentässä 1950-luvulla.
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(2018)Finnish prisons were in a new situation after fall 2015. The country had received a historical amount of asylum seekers and this also affected prisons, where the number of foreign prisoners, especially remand prisoners, rose. Many of these new prisoners had a Muslim background. At the same time, there were several jihadist motivated terrorist attacks in Europe, where attackers have had a background in prison. These attacks raised public concern in Finland, too. While in many European countries prisons have taken a more accommodating approach to multi-faith, Finland has still very little services for minority religions, such as Islam. This study aims to understand prison officers’ capability to recognise and prevent Muslim radicalisation in Finnish prisons. It is important to bring the prison officers’ voice to the discussion on radicalisation. They are with inmates every day, and they are the ones who will notice the changes in prisoners. The prison officers’ behaviour can both prevent and expose to radicalisation. I did my research in two Finnish prisons using semi-structured interviews and observing. There were altogether 12 interviews of prison officers, and in addition to this, I spent 11 days in prisons in May and June 2017. I will use Peter R. Neumann’s list of factors that help prevent radicalisation inside prisons as a tool to analyse the findings. In addition to this, I also use concepts of misrecognition and mediated recognition as a supporting tool to deepen the analysis. After analysing my data, I present some recommendations in the last chapter, Key findings and discussion. These recommendations are based on the findings of this study and the previous research on the topic. As the scope of this research is limited, I see the role of my study as preliminary research which aims to find themes that affect prison radicalisation from the prison officers’ perspective.
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Privacy as the Price of Free Digital Services : - Applying EU Competition Law on Digital Platforms (2023)The purpose of my thesis is to study the interrelationship between privacy and competition law in the context of the digital economy by evaluating both current and possible future paths of development. A starting point for the research is the assumption that digitisation and datafication have transformed market dynamics and created a pressure to integrate perspectives from the traditionally separate regimes of privacy and competition law. The research mixes doctrinal and legal theoretical methods to figure out how the privacy-competition law interrelationship has been construed in the EU competition case law so far, and how it should ideally be developed in the future, from the perspective of the goal of non-dominance, a conception of freedom developed within the political philosophy of republicanism which I argue forms the main underlying objective of both privacy and competition law. I will argue that developments in the case law show a continuous movement away from so-called separationists accounts of the privacy-competition interrelationship towards increasing integrationism. I will further argue that this is, especially if combined with new data-centered special legislation, the likely optimal development from a non-dominance point of view.
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(2017)This thesis focuses on privacy-preserving statistical inference. We use a probabilistic point of view of privacy called differential privacy. Differential privacy ensures that replacing one individual from the dataset with another individual does not affect the results drastically. There are different versions of the differential privacy. This thesis considers the ε-differential privacy also known as the pure differential privacy, and also a relaxation known as the (ε, δ)-differential privacy. We state several important definitions and theorems of DP. The proofs for most of the theorems are given in this thesis. Our goal is to build a general framework for privacy preserving posterior inference. To achieve this we use an approximative approach for posterior inference called variational Bayesian (VB) methods. We build the basic concepts of variational inference with certain detail and show examples on how to apply variational inference. After giving the prerequisites on both DP and VB we state our main result, the differentially private variational inference (DPVI) method. We use a recently proposed doubly stochastic variational inference (DSVI) combined with Gaussian mechanism to build a privacy-preserving method for posterior inference. We give the algorithm definition and explain its parameters. The DPVI method is compared against the state-of-the-art method for DP posterior inference called the differentially private stochastic gradient Langevin dynamics (DP-SGLD). We compare the performance on two different models, the logistic regression model and the Gaussian mixture model. The DPVI method outperforms DP-SGLD in both tasks.
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(2020)Henkilötietojen suoja eli tietosuoja on Euroopan unionin perusoikeuskirjassa vahvistettu perusoikeus. Yksityishenkilöiden tietosuoja vahvistui entisestään, kun vuonna 2018 alettiin kaikissa EU:n jäsenmaissa soveltaa Euroopan parlamentin ja neuvoston asetusta (EU) 2016/679 luonnollisten henkilöiden suojelusta henkilötietojen käsittelyssä sekä näiden tietojen vapaasta liikkuvuudesta ja direktiivin 95/46/EY kumoamisesta, lyhyemmin EU:n yleistä tietosuoja-asetusta. Asetusta täydennettiin myöhemmin kansallisella tietosuojalailla 1050/2018. Organisaatio, joka omistaa henkilörekisterin, on rekisterinpitäjä, ja henkilö, jonka tiedot ovat henkilörekisterissä, rekisteröity. Tietosuoja-asetuksessa on määritetty rekisterinpitäjän velvollisuudet, joiden avulla tämän on vastattava siitä, että rekisteröidyn oikeudet toteutuvat. Lisäksi rekisterinpitäjällä on osoitusvelvollisuus siitä, että henkilötietojen käsittely tapahtuu tietosuoja-asetuksen käsittelyperiaatteiden mukaisesti, sekä ilmoitusvelvollisuus kansalliselle valvontaviranomaiselle tilanteissa, joissa on tapahtunut henkilötietojen tietoturvaloukkaus. Tietosuoja-asetuksella on vaikutuksia sovelluskehitykseen. Asetus velvoittaa huolehtimaan sisäänrakennetusta tietosuojasta (Privacy by Design) eli tietosuojaa tuottavien toiminnallisuuksien toteutuksesta tietojärjestelmiin alusta alkaen. Asetus on pitkä ja hankala, joten ollut organisaatioille työlästä havaita siitä kaikki velvoitteet. Tässä tutkielmassa on pyritty vastaamaan tuohon ongelmaan etsimällä asetuksesta sisäänrakennetun tietosuojan vaatimukset ja kiinnittämällä ne TOGAF-kokonaisarkkitehtuurikehykseen. Tämän pohjalta on toteutettu sovelluskehityksen tietosuojaohjeistuksen runko, jota kehittämällä on organisaatiolle luotavissa toimiva ohjeistus sisäänrakennetun tietosuojan rakentamisen tueksi.
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(2023)In the past decade or so, digital platforms have brought a mass of ease and accessibility into people’s lives by introducing, amongst others, new ways of communicating, shopping and searching for information. However, this ease has not come without problems, as the previous years have shown a concentration of market power in the digital markets with consequences to data privacy as well. It has been a challenge for enforcers to apply a traditional competition law framework to these markets, as they are characterized by their “free” nature, where users in reality pay with their personal data. Prompted by these problems, in 2020 the European Commission proposed a new Digital Markets Act (DMA) to regulate the behaviour of large tech companies, also called gatekeepers. Although the DMA is not strictly speaking a competition law instrument, it has been largely inspired by competition cases. The DMA became applicable in May 2023, with the Commission designating six gatekeepers who will have to comply with the DMA’s obligation by March 2024. While the mentioned interplay between data protection law and competition law has been discussed by academia for a while and the Commission has recognised this, it has hardly been evident in its enforcement practice. However, the interlinkage of data protection and competition law is now witnessed in Article 5(2) of the DMA which was inspired by the German competition authority’s (Bundeskartellamt) Facebook decision where the Bundeskartellamt concluded that Facebook had abused its dominant position by breaching its obligations under the GDPR. The case eventually made its way in front of the CJEU, which recently gave its ruling. Even though the case was decided under Article 102 TFEU, and not under the DMA, the ruling will arguably have consequences in the application of said instrument. This thesis thus examines the relationship of data protection and competition law in the EU, the DMA, especially Article 5(2) thereof, and the Facebook case. Although mainly using the legal doctrinal method, the thesis also reflects on policy choices and actions ought to be taken in order for Article 5(2) of the DMA to achieve its envisaged aims. As this field will rapidly continue to develop, it is advisable to note that changes have been taken into account up until November 2023.
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(2022)Tiivistelmä - Referat - Abstract In the modern European data economy two central ideals are in tension. Collection and processing of personal data is central to the commerce, development and innovation in Europe, but these interests must be balanced with robust protections for the human right to privacy. Anonymisation of personal data has been seen by some to have high potential to ease the tension between the interest to use data and the protection of the individual’s privacy. This approach has been examined by many European actors, including Data Protection Authorities. Further, there is precedent of anonymisation being interpreted as an equal alternative to erasure, in a specific case after a right to erasure request was made by a data subject in a commercial relationship. In this thesis I discuss anonymisation in the European data law, and specifically whether the approaches that promote the view that anonymisation can be understood as an erasure alternative are in line with the European Data law. I examine anonymisation with a dogmatic method and connect the legal understanding to perspectives of how anonymisation and erasure are understood in data science. To discover whether these approaches are incompatible with the European data law, I pose the question of whether anonymisation fulfils the protections laid out in Article 17 of General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679. To answer this question, I define the framework of successful application of the protections of the right to erasure, and with this methodology comparatively analyse erasure and anonymisation against the common criteria. It emerges that the concept of anonymisation is not clearly defined by the European primary sources, and further that the Data Protection Authorities’ approaches vary. Concepts of personal data and anonymous data are not in symmetry, and there is grey area around these terms. European legal understanding anonymisation as a concept, and to a lesser degree erasure, are distanced from the data science understanding of the terms. Developing a more nuanced understanding of anonymisation, both as a concept and its types and goals specifically, would provide tools for the European Data Law to create a more robust and future-proof legal framework. These findings show that European Data Law develop a more full and nuanced understanding of these concepts and their connections. In this way, the European Data Law could foster a bright, secure and balanced legal framework, creating opportunities and security for both data subjects and data controllers alike.
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(2019)Over the last years, Location-Based Services (LBSs) have become popular due to the global use of smartphones and improvement in Global Positioning System (GPS) and other positioning methods. Location-based services employ users' location to offer relevant information to users or provide them with useful recommendations. Meanwhile, with the development of social applications, location-based social networking services (LBSNS) have attracted millions of users because the geographic position of users can be used to enhance the services provided by those social applications. Proximity detection, as one type of location-based function, makes LBSNS more flexible and notifies mobile users when they are in proximity. Despite all the desirable features that such applications provide, disclosing the exact location of individuals to a centralized server and/or their social friends might put users at risk of falling their information in wrong hands, since locations may disclose sensitive information about people including political and religious affiliations, lifestyle, health status, etc. Consequently, users might be unwilling to participate in such applications. To this end, private proximity detection schemes enable two parties to check whether they are in close proximity while keeping their exact locations secret. In particular, running a private proximity detection protocol between two parties only results in a boolean value to the querier. Besides, it guarantees that no other information can be leaked to the participants regarding the other party's location. However, most proposed private proximity detection protocols enable users to choose only a simple geometric range on the map, such as a circle or a rectangle, in order to test for proximity. In this thesis, we take inspiration from the field of Computational Geometry and develop two privacy-preserving proximity detection protocols that allow a mobile user to specify an arbitrary complex polygon on the map and check whether his/her friends are located therein. We also analyzed the efficiency of our solutions in terms of computational and communication costs. Our evaluation shows that compared to the similar earlier work, the proposed solution increases the computational efficiency by up to 50%, and reduces the communication overhead by up to 90%. Therefore, we have achieved a significant reduction of computational and communication complexity.
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(2017)This research studies Adequacy Decisions, the Safe Harbour and the Privacy Shield, under which transfers of personal data from the European Union to the United States are facilitated. The focus is on ‘redress mechanisms’, thus the mechanisms under which EU citizens can seek redress or compensation against violations of data protection rules. The research assesses the redress mechanisms of the Privacy Shield in the Light of the Court of Justice of the European Union case Schrems. Firstly the Safe Harbour Decision and its redress mechanisms are introduced. Then the Schrems case where the Safe Harbour was invalidated is analysed. Focus is on what the Court says about redress mechanisms, and the criteria that it establishes for the assessment of Adequacy Decisions. This criteria is then applied to the Privacy Shield redress mechanisms. According to the criteria, an Adequacy Decision must fulfil the requirements set out in Article 47 of the Charter of Funda-mental Rights, thus right to an effective remedy and to a fair trial. The different redress mechanisms of the Privacy Shield are assessed in light of this Article by using case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, as well as European Court of Human Rights. The study finds that all the redress mechanisms are not in line with Article 47. More specifically there are deficiencies in terms of the remedies available under different redress options, also all the procedures cannot be considered ‘fair’ as required by Article 47. More specifically, there is not always an opportunity for inter partes proceedings or a reasoned decision. Also the independence and impartiality of some of the dispute resolution bodies is questionable. Moreover, the complexity of the Privacy Shield redress mechanisms may in some situations mean that the time of the proceedings may exceed what would be considered reasonable from the perspective of European law. The redress of mechanisms of the Privacy Shield rely heavily on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). The compatibility with Article 47 of the Charter and ADR is not discussed as such, although the requirement of mandatory ADR before judicial dispute resolution is considered. Instead, the study asks whether the ADR mechanisms of the Privacy Shield could be compatible with Article 47. This study is done from a European perspective, thus focusing on EU fundamental rights. Study of laws of the United States are left outside the scope of the research, although some references are made. Similarly the study of redress mechanisms is limited to those introduced in the Privacy Shield and routes to seek redress in US courts are excluded. The aim of this study is thus to assess whether the Privacy Shield would pass the criteria established by the Court of Justice of the European Union in its Schrems case. The study takes a fundamental right perspective, although it does recognize that European data protection law does have other objectives other than the protection of personal data, such as economic objectives.
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(2017)The computer science education research field studies how students learn computer science related concepts such as programming and algorithms. One of the major goals of the field is to help students learn CS concepts that are often difficult to grasp because students rarely encounter them in primary or secondary education. In order to help struggling students, information on the learning process of students has to be collected. In many introductory programming courses process data is automatically collected in the form of source code snapshots. Source code snapshots usually include at least the source code of the student's program and a timestamp. Studies ranging from identifying at-risk students to inferring programming experience and topic knowledge have been conducted using source code snapshots. However, replicating source code snapshot -based studies is currently hard as data is rarely shared due to privacy concerns. Source code snapshot data often includes many attributes that can be used for identification, for example the name of the student or the student number. There can even be hidden identifiers in the data that can be used for identification even if obvious identifiers are removed. For example, keystroke data from source code snapshots can be used for identification based on the distinct typing profiles of students. Hence, simply removing explicit identifiers such as names and student numbers is not enough to protect the privacy of the users who have supplied the data. At the same time, removing all keystroke data would decrease the value of the data significantly and possibly preclude replication studies. In this work, we investigate how keystroke data from a programming context could be modified to prevent keystroke latency -based identification whilst still retaining valuable information in the data. This study is the first step in enabling the sharing of anonymized source code snapshots. We investigate the degree of anonymization required to make identification of students based on their typing patterns unreliable. Then, we study whether the modified keystroke data can still be used to infer the programming experience of the students as a case study of whether the anonymized typing patterns have retained at least some informative value. We show that it is possible to modify data so that keystroke latency -based identification is no longer accurate, but the programming experience of the students can still be inferred, i.e. the data still has value to researchers.
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(2020)The aim of this thesis was to find out whether the enactment of national space law is countering international space law principles, especially in the case of space law concerning space-based resources. The thesis focuses on the legality of use of space-based resources, on behalf of private actors and States. There are three main research questions, out of which the first one asks whether private actors need their own legal regimes and instruments, separate from those that bind States. The second question continues by asking if the constant development of national space legislation is in fact countering international legal principles set forth in the space law treaties. The third question aims to discover if national space law is beginning to overtake international space law norms, in the specific case of laws concerning space resource extraction, and if States are driving their own interests instead of sharing the benefits as the common property of all nations and peoples. The research is completed using a legal dogmatic method and partially a politico-legal one. The main sources being used are specific national space resource legislation (The United States, Luxembourg, and the UAE), international space law treaties (the most important ones being the Outer Space Treaty and the Moon Agreement), the legal principles derived out of those international treaties, and especially those scientific articles, books, and writings that concern themselves with space resource topics in the field of law. The hierarchy of norms will be derived from ICJ statute Article 38, with treaty interpretation being done through the use of the Vienna Convention Articles 31 and 32. The conclusion of this research illustrated that the national and international space law systems, with regards to space resources, are outdated and insufficient for modern realities. This is especially true of the international space law system. National interests are in constant disagreement with international space resource law, which greatly hinders any developments in it. The existing national space law systems also undercut international treaty principles with the effect that international space resource law is becoming less effective in controlling space resources. This forms a considerable risk to the international space law principle on the sharing of space resources as the common property of all mankind. The final deductions of this research are that in the end it would be pertinent to crate new international space resource law, so that private actors functioning in the realm of outer space would be more efficient and predictable, and the principle of space resources as the common good of all mankind would be realised not just de jure, but also de facto.
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(2022)The aging population is a global phenomenon and at the same time a challenge to an increasing number of states. Different countries have opted for a various kind of welfare state models with varying emphasis on public and private provision to confront the situation. Since the collapse of socialist system, the society, and with it the social sector including the elderly care, in the Russian Federation has experienced substantial transformations and fluctuations. It is facing also an increasing number and share of aged population, and the welfare mix is still forming itself. The aim of the thesis was to observe the private providers in the elderly care in this context: what kind of picture the care homes construct of themselves and how they can be positioned in the Russian welfare mix. The material of the thesis consists of the service and facility descriptions on websites of 26 private care homes in the city of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region in the Russian Federation. The corpus was traced with help of search engine searches, and finally selected based on the defined location. The social constructionism and welfare state theories served as frame and approach for the analysis. The thesis thus paid attention to the local circumstances and audience alongside the global context. The texts were analysed with keywords derived from the globally acknowledged document, The Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing, which expresses the guidelines for actions to guarantee the rights and appropriate care of elderly persons. The method used for keyword analysis was CADS, corpus-assisted discourse studies, specifically the chosen software was AntConc. A closer case study was conducted of four care homes. Also, a short summary on the financial possibilities and limitations for a private facility was presented. The results of the analysis showed that the private care homes, which included both those belonging to a chain and those operating as separate, independent units, in the focus area produced in their primary message to the public an image which correspond the targets proposed by the Madrid plan. The image given was that of a high-quality and safe care home which respects the individual needs and agency of an old person. The national characteristics were still apparent in the descriptions. The private care homes also saw themselves as a needed actor in the Russian welfare mix on the side of the public provision complementing it and offering a prime option for selected, wealthy clients.
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(2015)Tax neutrality and material tax uniformity (or in other words, horizontal equity) are both considered as elements of a good taxation system. The latter suggests that economically equivalent financial instruments should be taxed under similar rules. Tax neutrality, in turn, is concerned with efficiency of the tax system by implying that taxation should not distort the optimal allocation of resources in society. The private law part of this study presents how securitization, or securitization-like techniques have been applied to private equity fund interests, in order to turn the equity-based interest into a debt instrument. An observation is made that in some situations, the essential objective of the securitization transaction is to create an economically equivalent, debt-based counterpart to a normal private equity fund interest. One of the underlying purposes behind this kind of transaction might be to make it possible for small private investors to allocate some of their investment capital in private equity, and at the same time, widen the private equity fund’s sources of funding beyond the conventional institutional and other large-scale investors. Similarly, due to tax issues related to normal private equity fund interests, securitization structures have been used to allow public benefit organizations to invest in private equity. The theoretical part of this study presents the concepts of tax neutrality and tax uniformity, and their meaning within the context of taxation of financial instruments. Furthermore, it deals with the question in what circumstances could the Finnish General Anti-Avoidance Rule (the GAAR) come to be applied to economically equivalent financial instruments that produce different post-tax returns, i.e. differ in their tax treatment. Finally, it puts the aforesaid concepts in the context and substance of this study by specifying the questions that should be asked in the tax law part of the study. On the basis of the observations made in the private law part, the essential research question is whether returns on normal private equity fund interests and their securitized counterparts result in similar tax burden in situations, where the holder of such instruments is a public benefit organization or a natural person (private investor). In the tax law part of this study, the income tax treatment of both normal and securitized private equity fund interests is analyzed. In addition to producing answers to the questions presented in the theoretical part, the tax law part covers some of the current issues regarding income taxation of private equity funds and investors thereof. The method used in this part is mainly dogmatic, since the attention is in the contents and interpretation of existing law. Also some practical viewpoints will be presented with regard to the interplay between taxation of financial instruments and corporate finance. The study ends in conclusions, in which the research question is evaluated against the findings made in the tax law part. The study is able to conclude that the tax treatment of normal private equity fund interests and securitized private equity fund interests is not entirely consistent, and thus implies that the ideal of material tax uniformity does not realize between these two instruments. However, it is noticed that material tax uniformity should not necessarily be understood as an absolute requirement of a good tax system. Pursuing for material tax uniformity in the field of finance and investments may not lead to any overall improvements of the tax system, if the instrument considered as normal is actually non-tax neutral compared to other financial instruments. It is further discussed, whether there is any room for the GAAR to be applied to the securitization structures within the context of this study. Based on the observations made in the private law part, the suggestion is that the GAAR should not applied, because the structures – at least in this context – are usually based on commercial reasons, and should not be viewed as artificial.
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(2022)Forests are highly valued for the wide range of ecosystem services they provide and are increasingly expected to play a role in providing solutions to both rural development and global challenges. In countries where forest ownership structure is characterized by a high share of private ownership, non-industrial, private forest owners eventually determine the type and extent of management of a large part of national forest resources. In Italy, where this is the case, the potential of forests remains largely unexploited, and the alleged lack of active management even threatens to increase forest vulnerability. In this context, the new Italian Forest Strategy aims to untap the forests’ potential and enhance the delivery of their services by promoting an active, sustainable management, but is faced with the challenge of reviving the interest of private owners in managing their land. Despite being implicitly entrusted with the responsibility of stewardship of forest resources, the Italian forest owner is still a mysterious figure, due to data scarcity, and is mostly absent from the political and economic scene. Characterizing forest owners, understanding their values, objectives, and other factors affecting their behavior is crucial to develop appropriate and effective policy instruments that will sensitize and incentivize them to “own” their land in the way that society would expect of them. This work contributes to filling the data gap on Italian forest owners by presenting a case study from a region of the western Alps, the Autonomous Region of Aosta Valley. By the way of a structured questionnaire and in-depth semi-structured interviews, we investigated how forest owners perceived forest management and the role they played, could play, or would be willing to play in forest stewardship. The results show that forest owners unanimously believe that forests need to be managed, a term which they mostly associate to maintenance, intended as taking care of the forests in order to keep it healthy and prosperous. However, they still hold a rather traditional view of forest uses, in which social and societal functions of forests are rarely addressed or related to owner’s responsibility. Also, they do not perceive the forest as economically valuable, and the current lack of economic sustainability of forest operations is driving forest abandonment, which indicates that economic factors are a driving force for stewardship decisions. Five stewardship types, ranging on a gradient of low to high stewardship behavior, characterize the Aosta Valley forest owners: the oblivious and self-willed stewards (types that emerged from participants’ narratives), and the wishful, dutiful, and committed steward types (types represented by the participants). The wishful and dutiful types offer two targets of interest for policy intervention: the first is longing for a greater role in forest stewardship but needs guidance to act, and the second, whose stewardship behavior is driven by their moral norms towards their heritage, could be motivated to extend their existing range of action or diversify the ecosystem services they foster. Overall, we found that forest owners displayed willingness to increase their stewardship behavior but lacked the capacity to take on this responsibility alone in the current context. Raising stewardship levels will require regional forest authorities to engage more deeply with private owners and their forests, as well as strong supporting policies that should not neglect financial incentives in the difficult context of mountain forestry but should also aim to revalorize the forests and forest sectors, including the non-wood sector, which can help tackling the challenge of ensuring the societal outcomes of forest stewardship.
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(2021)The importance of multipurpose forests is increasing since forests can simultaneously provide solutions for climate change mitigation, biodiversity protection, and the diverse needs of humans. Therefore, forest management practices, various management objectives, and forest-related policies become necessary parts of sustainable forestry. A notable share of forest management decisions depends on the preferences and motives of private forest owners, and an increasing number of owners are interested in other than timber values in their properties. In addition, changes in forest ownership structures and varied use of forest management alternatives emphasize understanding private forest owners’ management motives. This thesis aims to examine Finnish private forest owners and their forest management preferences regarding the support of biodiversity values and interest in wood-material production for the needs of the bioeconomy. The survey data were collected in spring 2020 and included a choice experiment with three forest management schemes. Two hypothetical management contracts, timber-oriented, and nature-oriented strategies, were used as alternatives for the conventional management practices. The long-term effects from each management scheme were described with the changes in profit, biodiversity, carbon stock, climate change-induced damages, and one-time subsidy. The survey data were analyzed using conditional logit, random parameters logit, and latent class logit models. Forest owners consider biodiversity values and raw material supply for the bioeconomy important. However, the results suggest that, on average, forest owners may not be willing to accept the timber-oriented management contract, whereas the nature-oriented management strategy is generally a more preferred option. The latent class model reveals three forest owner types with different preferences and management objectives. The largest share of the respondents is identified as Traditionalists who prefer conventional management practices to other alternatives. They might be reluctant to change their strategies despite the level of subsidies. The smallest group, Environmentalists, is oriented towards environmental and natural values in their forests and would most likely use continuous cover forestry and safeguard biodiversity values. The monetary support does not necessarily impact their management decisions. The rest of the respondents are described as Profit-oriented owners who may be a potential target for various forest management contracts. They consider their property more often as financial security and could be motivated by compensation. The possibility for productive and viable forests has a considerable impact on forest owners’ management decisions. However, the results indicate broad interest in various management alternatives, and the segment-based analyses reveal different forest management objectives among the owners. Therefore, understanding the diversity between forest owners helps policymakers to target specific policy goals more effectively.
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(2018)Companies finance the equipment investments more often with financial products such as hire purchase and leasing. Simultaneously, the manufacturers as well as the retailers have implemented financial solutions under the own brand. The phenomenon is a market driver that affect the entire value chain. The purpose of the research was to conduct an in-depth review of the business by observing and understanding the motives, benefits and challenges behind private-label financial services. Moreover, the effects of the solutions on sales are assessed from the three key stakeholders’ perspective. The industrial focus is on the current market situation of agriculture and forestry machinery, which traditionally are pioneers in these solutions. Additionally, a country comparison is done on primary data level. The research method is qualitative, which is the most suitable approach for business-related topics with modest prior research. The source of the primary data was interviews with eight managers representing financiers, manufacturers and retailers within this business. A thematic analysis was utilized with five pre-selected themes that formed also the interview framework. According to the findings, the private-label financing has been successful for all involved stakeholders. From the vendor’s perspective, the private-label solutions are mainly used either to earn from the generated finance portfolio or as a manageable sales tool utilizing the brand value. For the financier, the services are rather profitable, since often, the manufacturers offer funds to lower the price of financing below competitors’ levels and additionally, the co-operation offers an exclusivity to the finance deals. In the future, these solutions seem to increase, because the financing is becoming a more important part of the sales. Along with the motives and benefits, the paper aimed to explore the co-operation and the effects on sales. The results indicate that the commitment of the partner is a focal part in the co-operation. The manufacturers and retailers are also demanding on the service level. For the financier, the risk-sharing, funds and exclusivity are key factors. The evidence given, the private-label financial solutions affect the direct sales and the sales work positively. Here, the standardized products and terms are important. Overall, the key stakeholders are in general rather satisfied with the solutions and all the respondents depicted interest to develop them further. However, a few challenges were extracted such as the unsophistication of the sales force, commitment of the partner and resources in terms of service and product level.
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